Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Sneaky Dragon – your favourite podcast to turn off.
This week: Oh wellness; payday bliss; side affects; crier’s remorse; damage deposition; pobody’s nerfect; fail safe; take a brake; storytelling; riff rough; no sugar tonight; cheese chatter; get lent; ladder day saints; foot fight; human grace; buckle down; March madness; Spike’s pique; Washington crossing the Elsewhere; hellscapes; false positive; singing the booze; professional crastinator; spectrum analysis; parental leave; answer: overdue fees; banned dessinée; comics research; Kirby enthusiasm; passive aggression again; whack-a-mole culture; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; presidential zeal; Byrne notice; Prada supporter; conscious coupling; holy manure; Bat and switch; and, finally, counterfeit Coen.
Question of the Week: What’s your favourite autobiography?
Sub-question of the Week: What new movie are you looking forward to?
Thanks for listening.
Sherlock Holmes eulogizes good ol’Canada – “lynchpin of the English-speaking world”!
Payday ain’t just the best day of the week!
“What’s a Payday bar?” you ask:
Man, they really gotta sell this stuff!
Man, they really gotta sell this stuff too!
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DAVE!
Happy Belated birthday!
Sorry that you’ve been ruminating about something that happened at work. One time I dropped an entire stack of T-12s while I was working in Kelowna. Didn’t have the wheels stopped on a pallet jack. Anywho, you are the MVP of Steel-Craft Vancouver so whatever happened its pennies compared to all the value you bring to Steel-Craft just by showing up everyday.
Hope all is well. Still really appreciate listening to the show! Love the life insights from Ian and yourself.
Also , to answer a question. Really looking forward to Dune part 2. Denis Villenueve just might be my favourite director these days.
– Ryan
I’m looking forward to Dune: Part 2 and Furiosa. After this year’s Sundance, I’m also looking forward to Love Lies Bleeding, I Saw the TV Glow, and Hit Man.
Dave please share your thoughts on Drive-Away Dolls. Personally I loved it and it makes me want to see all the Coen Brothers films. I also loved The Tragedy of MacBeth so I’m not yet sure who the best Coen is?
Thanks for the show!
The more Ian discusses comics on the podcast, the more I consider him a kindred spirit of comic book fandom. As a youngster, my access to comics was limited to the 7-Eleven walking distance from my house, any comic shops were either too far away or part of some dusty old bookshop. I too was first mesmerized by the intricate pages of George Perez, crowded and clean with detail…man could that man draw concrete and rock! Then I discovered “Son of Origins” at the Waldenbooks in our local mall. Not only was I taken by the painted John Romita cover with Iron Man front and center but also confused by Jack Kirby’s X-Men art…yeah, where was Ice Man’s ice pole coming from? It looked like from inside the Angel’s wing? Your thoughts about all this Ian are like my own and I wasn’t initially fond of Jack Kirby’s work either even though it’s romantic impact grew on me over the next few years. Kirby’s current work at that time was chunky and awkward and didn’t hold up to the Perez art as a young reader, I remember his Captain America Bi-Centennial art just looking almost like a caricature of sorts. Then entered Byrne and Austin and that was the big crush for me. When I was able to connect the comics tissue and how Kirby was a direct inspiration to the newer artists, only then did I appreciate his work way more than I had before. I didn’t read DC much at the time either, it seemed to have too much of a prerequisite that I could never catch up to. The fact that DC was older than Marvel was overwhelming but I did appreciate it. I remember all those books that Dave mentioned since a friend of mine who lived close to our school would invite me over, he had all those titles and was a big DC reader. I distinctly remember the Mister Miracle and The Demon comics he had and seeing Kirby’s work on those. Comics were always in the background of my childhood and those writers and artists were my first real heroes.
Having read it multiple times, my favorite autobiography is easily “Harpo Speaks”. Many consider it to be the best description of the Marx Brothers’ career through the eyes and (voice?) of Harpo himself. Something significant happened last week concerning “Harpo Speaks” and the son of the book’s co-author Rowland Barber. Harpo didn’t write the book alone, he co-wrote it with Rowland Barber in 1961 and in order to help Barber write it, recorded many of his stories for the author. Yes, Harpo did indeed…”Speak” and it’s been famously rumored that these tapes exist. Last week, out of nowhere, Rowland Barber’s son released a five minute YouTube video showing a cassette playing Harpo telling one of his stories about the trip to Russia in 1933. I never thought in my lifetime I would hear what Harpo sounded like, even this much, then Barber’s son posted the link on the Marx Brothers Council Facebook page with the promise of more videos of the rest of the tapes. This caused quite a stir and opened a Pandora’s box of debate, was this ethical? Did this shatter the magic of Harpo’s lifelong silence? Many such as myself, were delighted to hear it but a few were infuriated. Contacts were made to Harpo’s son, Bill Marx by a few upset fans and the door to any more tapes being shared has been closed….only the initial video about the Russia trip can be heard. At least we know they really do exist and once you hear what Harpo sounds like, you’ll realize it was best he kept silent throughout his career.
Looking forward to any films in 2024? You bet I am! This April “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” by Guy Richie looks compelling, kind of an “Inglorious Basterds” type of WWII spy warfare with a good-looking cast and based on a true story.
Then in May we have “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” which I’m still kind of on the fence on even though it’s fun to watch. I’m ready for the astronauts to return 2000 years later! Bring back The Icarus and start the time loop already!
As if you had to ask, “Deadpool and Wolverine” will scratch a very nasty itch in July after being without any Marvel features in a half dozen months. I’m so curious about this one I have to actively stop myself from trying to wrap my brain around it, I just want to sit back and watch it all unfold.
Lastly, in August I just saw the “Borderlands” trailer with the devastatingly beautiful Cate Blanchett in the lead. I have connections to this film since my company works with Gearbox software on the game collectibles and promotional media, so it’ll be cool to see it in live action!
My God, that’s enough guys. What films are you two looking forward to? How about some Oscar picks?
A good weekend to all, I’ll see you all at the movies!
My sister and I enjoyed listening to the audiobook of Patrick Stewart’s autobiography Making It So. It was perfect for us theatre/sci-fi nerds. I’m looking forward to Inside Out 2. Anxiety is going to arrive in Riley’s brain as she hits puberty. Let’s see if the sequel makes me cry as much as the first movie did.
Greetings Sneaklings, and belated Happy Birthday to David!
Your chat last week about religious zealots of the 1600s and their choice of headgear tickled my brain in a few ways – this is going to get rambly, so… buckle up!
1. Why buckles? My guess is that felt hats can be deformed just as easily as they are formed: a headband therefore acts as reinforcement, with a buckle as a ‘one size fits all’ adjustment ensuring the felt doesn’t stretch out of shape over time.
2. The poster boy for the buckle hat would have to be Vincent Price in his role as Witchfinder General – a film I need to see in order to complete the ‘unholy trinity’ which also includes ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’.
3. Evangelical xenophobes identified by their distinctive adjustable headgear, yelling about witch hunts and focusing their attention on New England… The satire writes itself! How did the hat evolve from buckle to MAGA? There’s a cartoon to be drawn there – hope you don’t mind if I do?
4. The pre-history of the original Pilgrim Fathers is ripe for re-telling, since it’s a catalogue of mishap with resonance to Brexit Britain:
They first set sail in 1607 from Boston, Lincolnshire, slap in the middle of England’s East coast:
A few minutes into their trip the ship’s captain turned them in to the authorities, who slapped them in jail and then ‘sent them back where they came from’ – this would have been the delightfully named town of ‘Scrooby’.
A year later they had another go, and ended up making a new life in… the Netherlands.
This was all well and good until they realised their kids were turning native – going Dutch, if you will.
So off they set for the New World – until their ship started taking on water and they had to land in Devon.
They changed ships and… well you know the rest.
I continue:
I entered a competition to memorialise the first voyage of the pilgrim fathers in Boston and their story was strongly resonant – the town was full of brexity tension, with little economic activity in town, and a large migrant crop-picking population on the edges working long days in fields without facilities. As we paused, we saw trilingual signs in English, Polish and Lithuanian saying ‘this hedge is not a toilet’. Boston was one of the highest leave-voting cities. Sigh.
To happier things!
My favourite autobiography would have to be Richard Feynman’s “Surely you must be joking, Mr Feynman”, which gets across his impish personality and enormous passion for learning about the world and for living life to its fullest. I was one of the nerds getting excited when Jack Quaid popped up in ‘Oppenheimer’, playing the bongos and sitting in his car without sunscreen or goggles. I’d love to see what Michel Gondry would do with a ‘Feynman’ movie.
And speaking of movies: This year I’m looking forward to:
– Furiosa – thanks for the reminder Liam – although I’m disappointed that Brendan McCarthy hasn’t collaborated on this one.
– The recently-announced ‘They Follow’ – a sequel to the ingeniously terrifying ‘It Follows’
– and ‘Boy Kills World’ which looks like entirely reprehensible fun.
Plus there’s a sneaking sense of anticippointment for ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’…
Cheers all,
Peter